Korean Scientists Claim to Have Cloned a Dog

Thursday • August 4, 2005

According to reproductive biologists, the dog represents a particularly difficult and complicated reproductive system. That’s what makes the claim made earlier today by a group of Korean scientists all the more interesting. According to The New York Times, researchers in Korea will publish their claim today in the journal Nature.
As the paper reported: Woo Suk Hwang, the principal author of the dog cloning paper, being published in the journal Nature, wrote that the puppy, an identical twin of the adult Afghan but born years later, was delivered by Caesarean section on April 24. The pregnancy lasted a normal 60 days and the newborn pup weighed 1 pound 3.4 ounces and was named Snuppy. Not Snoopy. The scientists named him for Seoul National University puppy. Cloning researchers were awed at the achievement, but not everyone shared their admiration.
Bioethicist Nigel Cameron suggested that the cloning of a dog pointed to even more ominous developments. “There’s sort of a dry run here for the human cloning debate,” he argued. “What we do with dogs we may well end up doing with our kids.”
He has a point. Furthermore, we should note that Dr. Hwang is also the researcher who announced in May that he had cloned human embryos and then removed stem cells from them. We should also note with concern that the Korean lab used 1,095 eggs from 122 dogs before succeeding with a live birth. The Brave New World, driven by an unbridled lust for biotechnology, closes in on us fast.